Loyalty, Family, and Quietness
by The Seven of Us
Summary: [Fury's Stresses 1] "SHIELD is compromised." "Who the hell is this?" Nick Fury demanded. Dry laughter echoed from the other line. "Does it really matter when it is HYDRA who guards your back and runs your missions?" "How do you know this?" Amusement was laced through the other man's voice: "There are those loyal to SHIELD, those loyal to HYDRA, and those loyal to me." By Ruby. AU.


****EDIT AT THE BOTTOM, PLEASE READ****

 **Loyalty, Family, and Quietness: [Fury's Stresses 1] "SHIELD is compromised." "Who the hell is this?" Nick Fury demanded. Dry laughter echoed from the other line. "Does it really matter when it is HYDRA who guards your back and runs your missions?" "How do you know this?" Amusement was laced through the other man's voice: "There are those loyal to SHIELD, those loyal to HYDRA, and those loyal to me."**

* * *

Fury stared at his phone in disbelief as the man hung up on him. His _personal_ phone. The one that only five people had the number to.

Why on earth would someone call him to tell him that SHIELD had been compromised by that someone's people and HYDRA? It made no sense, unless that person downright hated HYDRA and wasn't concerned about that someone's people who were in SHIELD's headquarters. That meant that they were highly trained, by both SHIELD and the person on the phone.

"Phil?" Maria guessed.

"What?" Fury said, jolted from his thoughts.

Maria straightened. "That wasn't Phil."

It wasn't a question.

"No," Fury agreed. "It was a warning."

The only question was whether SHIELD had gained an ally or an enemy.

* * *

"Fury, Nicholas James. Born 1918."

He was standing in front of Zola's computerized brain and ordering him to tell him everything that Zola knew about the corruption of SHIELD. The nice thing about Zola being computerized is that he couldn't say no.

"Operation Paperclip had SHIELD recruiting scientists with…strategic value," Zola said. "I was merely one of many. We had learned in the war that humanity, though not to be trusted with its own freedom, would fight for it anyways. We needed them to surrender their freedom willingly. And when I was accepted into SHIELD, HYDRA grew, a _beautiful_ parasite. For seventy years, HYDRA has secretly been feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, we changed it."

"This has been going on for seventy years and _no one_ has noticed?" Fury demanded.

"Accidents," Zola said, sounding very smug, "will happen." Fury was chilled to see Howard's face flash across the screens, along with many others.

"And now?" Fury said.

"The world has grown so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security," Zola said. "Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise."

Fury shifted aggressively, resisting the urge to pull out his gun and shoot the damn speaker out. "Purification process? The helicarriers?"

"Indeed, Director. I had developed an algorithm when I was alive, one that could process which people could be a threat to HYDRA—through their high school test scores, their IQ scores, their level of determination, and over a hundred other factors. The threats will be neutralized through your helicarriers, Director." Zola paused. "I am curious, however, how you have discovered this, as it does not seem that SHIELD is in a high level of strife yet."

Fury's smile was grim. "I didn't discover it. HYDRA has a double agent."

His smile got a little bit more genuine when Zola appeared to wrinkle his nose. _Then_ he shot out the speakers.

He was tired of hearing infuriatingly slow, Swiss-accented English.

* * *

"This place is secure, correct?"

Stark looked at him, startled. "JARVIS, privacy mode. No electronics allowed to be on at all in this room."

Faintly, Fury could hear a _fizt_ sound coming from his collar as Stark's AI disabled everything.

"Whatcha got for me? Gimme," Stark said.

Fury slid the file over. "Two days ago, I had intended to ask you if you would let SHIELD use your repulsor technology for these new and improved helicarriers."

"I would have said maybe," Stark said, glancing through the papers. "What's new in the last two days?"

Fury thumped down another file. "I got a tip. SHIELD has been compromised."

Stark cocked an eyebrow at Fury, even as he reached for the second file. "Compromised? By how much? One or two? And by who—holy _shit._ "

Fury stayed quiet as Stark read through the file. The man's face got progressively paler, and his arc reactor glowed brighter.

"Who tipped you off?" Stark finally said, still reading.

"I don't know."

Stark looked up. "You don't _know?_ How the hell did you get the tip? Telegram?"

"He called my personal cell and told me that SHIELD was compromised. When I asked him who he was, he responded with, 'Does it matter when it is HYDRA who guards your back and runs your missions?'"

The genius made a half-nod, half-grimace of acknowledgement.

"Then I asked him how he knew this, and he said, 'There are those loyal to SHIELD, those loyal to HYDRA, and those loyal to me.'"

"So now you want me to figure out who the third group is," Stark guessed.

"No," Fury said. "I want you to throw one of your famous temper tantrums at loaning me your tech, but I also thought—out of the goodness of my heart—"

Stark laughed.

"—that you should know what happened to your parents was not an accident."

His grin was gone in an instant. "What?"

Fury paced around the table. "Seems like Howard got into something that he shouldn't have. He said something stupid to the wrong person. That accident was no accident. Do _not_ say anything without this—" Fury waved at the room, "whole shebang going on. Until I tell you otherwise, assume any agent of SHIELD besides Hill and Coulson to be HYDRA."

Stark seemed stunned. "Not a problem. Don't like any of you anyways."

Fury snorted. "I have at least one bug on me, so disable the privacy mode once you really get into the tantrum. I don't need to show my hand yet."

When Stark's grin came back with a vengeance, Fury almost regretted it.

Almost.

Because shooting HYDRA in the foot—even in a three-legged race—was worth the headache of Stark's fake tantrum.

* * *

SHIELD already had mandatory physicals each year. For the field agents, they had physicals each time they came back from a mission _and_ every six months. No one had had the same kind of physical, and it wasn't uncommon for Fury to sit in on a few.

He had been Director for years. If he hadn't learned how to listen, talk, and do paperwork all at the same time by now, he never would.

Fury started with one doctor, one of the best, whose physical was overseen by Hill. He was given a shot, full of truth serum rather than whatever Hill had told him it was, and asked who his topmost loyalty was to. The man, whose last name was Solace, looked startled at the question and replied willingly: "My cousin. He's my dad's uncle's son, which would technically make him like a second cousin once removed or something, but I refer to him as 'cousin' to keep it simple. He's pretty cool."

"Why is SHIELD not your first loyalty?" Fury asked curiously.

"Because family comes first, no matter the distance," Solace said immediately. "SHIELD is a pretty close second, though, if it helps."

"It does," Hill said. "Okay, now get up…"

Fury ignored them after the important part was over. Hill knew to take him to Stark Tower and explain why he'd been injected with truth serum and questioned.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Fury found it _very_ interesting that all of those who didn't name SHIELD as their first loyalty named a nameless cousin of varying degrees of relation (he'd heard everything from a simple 'cousin' to 'my mother's grandnephew') instead. Or HYDRA, but he wasn't too concerned about it, now that _SHIELD's_ purification process was underway.

Towards the end of sorting through all of the field agents (they had gone through the handlers and the doctors and healing staff, now they were to the field agents), there was one girl by the name of Gardner who hesitated in simply saying 'cousin', like all the rest had, before providing a deeper explanation.

Fury had drawn a family tree of the very strange family, as near as he could figure. There were three main people: the man who had a bunch of children, who also had a bunch of children; the woman who had a couple of children; and then the other man who only had the single, solitary child. The single, solitary child was the man they were looking for. Sure, there were quite a few scattered people of relatively the same age that also claimed to be related that were on the far edges (like the three siblings had an aunt, and then those four had children and they were all within a couple of years of each other somehow), but Fury would figure it out.

The man who saved SHIELD would probably not stay very quiet for very long.

And then he would see how on earth this family worked. And where the hell were the _parents?_

* * *

 ***EDIT 8-19-17* Deleted previous author's note, because it was getting unwieldy.**

 **Each piece of the series is meant to have a time skip between them. That being said, I've gotten a lot of comments about how this isn't really suitable for fanfic-dot-net.**

 **So, there are two options. You can use the first, partial link below. I'll put the next story's link in all of the series. Just take the original fanfic-dot-net-slash and insert this after the slash:**

 **s/12399750/1/Loyalty-Family-and-Madness**

 **Second option is meandering your way over to AO3 and taking a look at the series there. Take the spaces out of the following (and replace 'dot' with '.' idk why it didn't go through):**

 **archiveofourown dot org / series/714852**

 **\- For those unfamiliar with AO3, the above link will take you to see all the works in the series. Since you've just finished reading the first, you'll go with the second story. When you finish that one, at the bottom of the last chapter there will be something that looks like this:**

 **Previous Work * Part 2 of  Fury's Stresses * Next Work **

**\- You'll go ahead and click 'Next Work' until you run out of works to read. Have fun!**

 **Ruby**


End file.
